Counterpoint
by Chauchi
Summary: The worst held-back secrets are easiest to see when a vision reflects back what's deepest in our heart. Post-ep for 3x04: Nasty Habits.


A/N: The worst held-back secrets are easiest to see when a vision reflects back what's deepest in our heart. Post-ep for 3x04: Nasty Habits.

Or… what happens when you _do_ use the stupid blue potion to wake up your girlfriend instead of True Love's Kiss. This stands on its own perfectly fine as a one-off, but also works as a pivot against _Chase the Sun_ if you happen to be following along on that story (and yes, this particular distraction does indeed mean that Chp. 12 still has a big gaping hole in the end). So no fluffy bunnies live here… Thanks very much for reading!

* * *

**Counterpoint**

The nights were the hardest. At least during the day it was easier to pretend he was still here: puttering around his shop or the house or… terrorizing the townsfolk. Anything if it didn't mean he'd left for good. Still, there was only so much time one could bury oneself in a library that reminded her so strongly of him before the ghosts chased her out, regardless.

_I will see you again._

She had to believe it because to consider otherwise just might destroy her.

Belle sat alone at the top of the wood and steel gangway that had once led to the deck of the Jolly Roger and now remained behind as some absurd sort of memorial to the lost: the ramp he'd walked up after kissing her goodbye. The harbourmaster had tried once to move it, but she'd protested with something akin to thinly disguised panic and he'd conceded with a look of pity at odds with the animosity everyone else felt for the man she yearned for with all her heart.

Rumple would need it. When he came back.

And so it was the same place she sat every night and waited; stared out across the calm water to the place where they'd vanished through a swirling portal to another land. It was the not knowing that carved the worst damage: not knowing where he was, not knowing if he was okay… and especially… not knowing whether to mourn; whether his sacrifice had already left her a widow to a twice offered vow of forever.

A chilled wind blustered and blew and she shivered against the cold while holding onto a thin wisp of hope for it was all she had left, the numbing blankness in her life containing a hole into which only he fit. She cradled their little blue and gold teacup in her lap, a finger unconsciously worrying the chip in the rim.

Her prison was different now, but no less a prison.

The cloaking spell had worked leaving the town and the travelers separated by a magical barrier: hidden where no one could find them, not even her beloved Rumple.

At first his loss hurt so much that a small part of her had fleetingly wished for the blank void of the asylum where she didn't know she was supposed to miss anyone, but then just as quickly banished the idea immediately thereafter. No. She'd much rather deal with the dreadful solitude. It meant she remembered herself and that their love held strong and that was worth any amount of time apart.

In its place Belle played the game. She'd gotten used to it in those long, lonely years locked up in the Queen's palace where the isolation manifested itself as a fantasy of the man she missed most. But not the one who'd shouted and railed. Instead she'd find him or he'd find her: that part didn't matter so much because the ending was always alike. She'd tell him she loved him and he'd admit the same, and she'd finally be free to fly into his embrace the way they were always meant to be, wiping away his angry words and terrible rejection with the soothing power of touch. Then he'd kiss her because the need was absolute and his curse would melt away.

An ordinary couple with an extraordinary love.

There'd been a lifetime worth of conversations afterward; shared smiles. And sometimes she'd simply imagined him holding her tight against his heart and they didn't say anything at all because they didn't have to. It was enough to be together.

"Rumple." He appeared silently at her elbow, standing on the wharf and she welcomed him with a tender caress along his jaw and a tremulous smile. He returned the expression while turning the corner then carefully lowered himself to sit next to her on the gangway; placed his cane to the side.

A pair of stars shone brightly overhead and for a long moment they merely enjoyed the stillness of the night. Eventually he spoke into the silence: "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you."

"Belle. You shouldn't be. When I said goodbye to you, we both knew it was for good."

His words ripped out her heart and she felt her lip quiver under the weight of loss. "I believe that you'll come back. You'll fight for me. You'll fight for us."

He was hiding something. She could tell. She could always tell. Even The Curse hadn't been able to take away her ability to read people, especially him.

Rumple cupped a hand over hers; traced the length of delicate fingers curled around chipped porcelain. "No. I won't. Deep down you know it's the truth. You were always the brave one. Not me."

"You don't believe I meant forever." Tears welled at the crushing thought but she blinked them away with a colossal need to stay strong, to not break in front of him even though he wasn't truly there.

_Look, Mr. Gold? I am sorry she may have loved you, but I am not her._

Belle shivered at the harsh press of memory. She'd lunged out as Lacey saying the most hurtful thing she could, and in the heat of the moment she'd meant it; had stalked away from both him and them, determined never to return. Lacey hadn't wanted the good man hiding within the monster. She'd wanted the monster. And though he didn't recognize it, that piece, those memories, were now Belle's: twined inside in an act of ownership that could not be undone.

Lacey's wound had scraped clean through his deepest core yet she'd seen how a part of him hadn't been surprised… like he'd been expecting her desertion all along and it was just a matter of time before she found someone else. Someone better.

_I expect I'll never see you again._

The pulsing scar of continued abandonment was perhaps the hardest one to heal.

Rumple stared sadly at their joined hands. "Eventually you'll leave me because you can see me for what I really am. You think you see a good man, but in time you'd see the monster."

Love is layered and the mystery and joy of uncovering those layers in another was what had always driven her forward even through the darkest pain of night. Belle was the only one that had ever beheld the beauty within the heart he'd hidden away from the world. Maintaining his mask was not what they needed, wouldn't ever be the bond that sealed two souls together forever.

She didn't have time to respond; he'd earnestly continued straight on. "My son is dead. The only way I can redeem myself is by saving his son and giving my life."

"There is another way, another path, and you know what it is." Gentle fingertips hovered over his lips and her voice shook. "I see the man you are and I love you. All of you." She would never stop fighting for his redemption even if all that meant was sitting and waiting because he didn't understand that she'd already seen the monster… and had stayed.

The hooded look in his dark eyes told her all she needed to know: in his heart he'd already let her go. They were lovers whose paths had merely intersected for a time; her Rumplestiltskin a man with nothing left to live for. And as much as she wanted to believe it could be love to draw him back, Belle knew with heavy certainty that it wasn't her he searched for in the black.

"Bae was your only happy ending." He'd said nothing so she'd verbalized the unspoken weight sinking between them into a bottomless ocean.

Rumple flinched; his gaze slid past hers. "Belle…"

He could have cast the cloaking spell himself then let them all go in search of Henry together. Yet he didn't want me with him in the end. The truth of that thought was a slick cut through her tattered heart. She didn't need protection. She needed to be with the man she loved.

And the kiss… True love's kiss…

_If he doesn't love you, well then the kiss won't even work._

They'd glossed over the issue in the months before he'd left, neither mentioning the uncomfortable truth though it had become glaringly more apparent with each passing day that something was painfully, obviously wrong. Nothing could hide the fact that true love's kiss hadn't worked. Not by the wishing well, not in the hospital after she'd lost her memory, nor with Lacey and not even at the very end when she'd silently urged the magic to work; to know in her heart how deeply he loved her before he sailed away.

In the beginning she'd thought they'd had their happy ending. There was magic in Storybrooke. She'd awoken to bright forest sunshine and the flooding crowd of memories with one in particular arching over all of deep brown eyes, remembered from a single life-altering moment at a spinning wheel; matched with a second from a pawn shop in a new land.

He was her Rumplestiltskin and he most definitely loved her. He'd told her so, finally admitting the truth she'd always known in her heart. It'd been the only thing that had gotten her though years of captivity and for the very first time it wasn't a dream. He'd softly brushed his fingers against her cheek and promised he wouldn't take his revenge against Regina before touching his mouth to hers. He'd _chosen_ to kiss her and it was beautifully, wonderfully magical, wiping away all the long painful years apart with the tender shoots of rekindled longing.

She'd thought for sure his curse had broken as she'd snuggled flat against his body and it was everything she'd ever hoped. He was a man again. That he wasn't, truly, yielded cruel disappointment and she'd fled, walking and walking and running and never wanting to see him again. Their kiss _should_ have immediately broken his curse and it was the first niggling whisper of worry and why not that had driven her back. She always went back.

Because it should have worked. And she loved him.

They'd never referred to it again beyond the oblique references of that night; had instead buried the problem in a blissful night of uncovered passion. He'd been surprised at how deeply she wanted him as if he thought himself ugly and old and couldn't fathom the attraction, but that only made her love him more. Working at buttons and zippers, they'd slowly revealed themselves to the other and it was only after tossing aside his navy dress shirt, and with her hands and mouth smoothing down his bare skin, that his nerves had finally skittered away. She'd straddled his waist and raised her arms and the dress he'd given her had vanished without a thought.

More kisses led to wandering caresses and gentle laughter, every inch of him a mystery to be mapped with patience and love: the sweep of ribs and the pounding thud of his heart vibrating beneath her mouth; the perfect fit of a hand at his hip. His palms cupped her breasts and she'd sighed then moaned when he followed the touch with his tongue, the soft expression of wonder that graced his eyes as he discovered a spot that made her quiver and quake more than enough to obliterate any lingering misgivings.

There was an ebb and flow: a natural cadence to the dance as if destiny itself had intervened and some magical piece of them just... fit. He was hers, and she was his. Always. And Belle had murmured, "Forever," and, "Mine," against his mouth; had felt her heart touch the heavens when the shy seeds of bravery sprung to life in his expression.

It was so utterly right because it _was_ love. True love. In spite of it all, it had to be true. It floated between them and initially he'd dragged her down on top then rolled her underneath as the first full touch of his body stretching against hers flared hot with desperate desire. She'd held him closer; they'd arched together, Belle needing utmost to see his heart laid bare before her. No more secrets, just unending love and a safe haven from the shadows in the world.

Rumple managed a ragged whisper of, "Sweetheart," and the endearment was infinitely precious; had her coming apart in so many breathtaking ways.

Fingertips stroked across the base of his spine; he'd shivered and she'd smiled as the shimmering surge took hold. Forever had been right there in his gaze and all she could do was to silently mouth her love in return and pray that he would understand.

He'd leaned down, his tender kiss a possession that reached toward her soul and Belle had wondered if he was waiting also, willing the flood of magic to fix the gaping breach. Their eyes locked… and she witnessed a lightning flash of anguish coiled with waning hope in the instant before he tucked his face against her neck, her own eyes squeezing shut against the pain.

Clasped safe in his arms afterward there was nothing else to say, just a veiled anxiety to nurse. He would leave because he believed she would leave and a kiss… it wasn't enough. And neither could forget the monster lurking in the darkness.

The memory was replaced with another awakening, another curse: her first conscious thought as herself and realizing that it hadn't been true love that had broken Lacey's hold, but a potion instead.

He'd said her name and his face had crumpled with grief and it was so very clear how much he loved her; needed her. She'd flung forward with the imperative necessity of being in his arms, to feel his love once more: the firm pressure of his mouth and the taste of a kiss that could banish away the demons. Only they wouldn't flee and Bae was gone and he brokenly told of his failure as the world crashed down around them. He hadn't wanted to wake her up to die yet the need was far too great and there'd been no other way to break through the black.

Woven underneath had been further disappointment: deep unfathomable disappointment because what it meant was clear and then time had trickled away. There was no avoiding the hurtful sting of reality that relentlessly kept shredding at her innate optimism that all would be well.

Belle glanced sideways at the vision of Rumple then stared straight ahead, her hands clamped around the special cup she'd broken and he'd magically fixed. If only it was so easy to heal the rift, but no mask on earth could hide what was staring her straight in the face.

"You think I don't truly love you anymore." The hushed murmur seemed to reverberate off the water and there was no response. She turned to face him, but he was gone and her heart crushed in on itself.

"Belle?" She started at the sudden interruption, forcing aside the agony she was sure her friend could read.

"Victor and I were going to watch a movie. You should come with us."

Clearly worried, Ruby placed an inviting hand along the railing, but there was nothing the other woman could do. She needed Rumplestiltskin, not to put on a brave face; pretend everything was fine. Or worse: break down completely. "No thanks. Maybe next time." Her lips twitched in a facsimile of a smile then hollow eyes turned to gaze once more across the harbour.

"You can't put your life on hold forever," Ruby stated quietly. "I know that better than most." A warm hand squeezed her wrist and the attempt at comfort nearly undid her.

Yes. Yes she could.

Belle blinked rapidly against the threat of tears as the other woman slowly walked away. A happy ending was fleeting as smoke and if they didn't have true love, what that meant for him, for them, she wasn't sure. All she knew was Rumple had already given up. It left her trying desperately to hold onto a man who'd been slipping away by inches ever since their first sweet kiss had descended from beauty into horror.

"I'm coming:" A new vow, although she didn't know how or even if it was possible. "Do you hear me?" Her grip tightened around their teacup: a cup he'd cherished for years when he'd thought her dead and it was all he had left. He wasn't allowed to give up; to lose faith. "This isn't the end. I _will_ see you again."

A flicker of movement caught the corner of her eye though when she turned her head there was nothing. A curdle of apprehension swirled in her stomach.

"Who's there? Ruby?" She scrambled to her feet, hurrying down the ramp looking left then right. Still nothing. Yet she'd thought…

Belle pivoted; paused. And a flash of… something had her tearing down the wharf, heeled boots thudding dully against concrete. She turned again, shooting through a gate then once more, chasing shadows near the cannery and her heart immediately recognized the silhouette of shoulders and a dragon scale coat disappearing around a corner.

"Rumple." Faith gave her a burst of speed and then he was there… and yet he wasn't.

"Take me to him." The apparition floated before her, white eyes staring as if evaluating her demand. "Please!" It shot straight up without warning and Belle didn't even pause to think before catapulting forward, hand outstretched in desperation.

* * *

The nights were the hardest: a terrifying place where memory and regret skulked in the dim, dank places in his mind. During the day it was easy to play a part: to slip behind the cynical guise of heartless imp and evil sorcerer, to manipulate and deal; to be the one to choose the dark instead of it choosing you. A mask perfected over time that all believed save one. But always after nightfall came the lonely haunt of truth: of a cringing coward left alone, rejected and discarded.

Too many mistakes to count yet the worst remained forefront to blight a life littered with myriad wrong choices that could never be forgotten.

Rumplestiltskin was like his father and that worst had bared his son to a fate mirroring his own, the terrible cost of cowardice a nasty legacy to impart. A perpetual cycle of failure and desertion tumbled through their family tree from one painful generation into the next and now, again: abandoned by his only son who didn't believe his intentions could possibly be true.

The squid ink weakened by fractions and he struggled imperceptibly; the shimmering blue magic still holding him frozen tight in place. His boy was miraculously alive, but the trust of a son for his father had long since vanished into ancient dust. He had chosen Henry instead.

_Now it's my turn. Now I'm letting you go. _

Bae's angry words echoed in the darkness, pounding through his soul with vile precision while Rumplestiltskin slowly counted three: three times now his grown son had turned his back and walked, as if the more he tried to hold on tight, the easier he slipped away.

No, not Bae. Not any longer. He was Neal now: a stranger that had cast aside his father just as surely as he had let his young son drop through a whirling portal to a distant land, destroying two lives in the process and irreparably shattering a bond of love.

_You're my happy ending. This is. Because it's my redemption. I can be strong, son. If you have faith in me._

He'd told Neal the truth, admitting the existence of a prophecy that spelled his doom at the hand of his grandson, but it hadn't helped to heal the painful rift. No, instead matters were made worse. Honesty, it seemed, came with a price just as steep as magic and both inevitably left him rejected and forlorn.

Yet he wasn't surprised at Neal's actions in the slightest. Faith remained an illusion as fleeting as redemption; a false hope. The evidence of his torment had since dried on Rumple's weathered cheek, the tears hidden safely away behind stoic impassivity once more. Now no one could see how his battered heart had twisted and stretched: wrung out like a ratty sheet then trampled and forgotten in the dirt.

Neal hadn't believed his father's desperate plea. How could he? Centuries of evidence claimed the opposite and he'd grown up alone because of it.

There was a surge of pressure, his fingers twitched and finally the magical obstruction scattered leaving him free.

He drew a deep breath and removed the straw sailor from an inner pocket of his coat. Given to him by his father, it had eventually become a hideous symbol of his own abandonment, of his own ugly irrelevance in a cold, hard world; that he, Rumplestiltskin, hadn't ever been worth sticking around for.

The cruel memory stalked once again of a small lad's rapid freefall from childish happiness into aching torment: of waking up one sunny morning to find his father absent and no amount of searching nor pleading calls could disguise that clothes and food had also vanished into the dark. He'd struggled through the heavy chores on their tiny impoverished farm, telling himself not to worry even as the hours dragged and dragged past noon with no reprieve in sight. It would be okay. He was loved.

By dusk that hope had dashed completely; there was no denying his papa wasn't ever coming back. That night he'd sobbed himself to sleep, clutching his little toy against a lost and broken heart, unwanted and alone. And Pan had visited in his dreams.

His skin had thickened over centuries and some even thought they knew him now. Only one had ever recognized the truth; had bothered to look beyond the fashioned mask to the broken man within and the mangled mess of a heart too often savaged by rejection. That, in and of itself, held its own terrors.

"I'm so sorry, Rumple. Neal should have trusted you." He turned to spy the vision of Belle sitting on a mossy log across the clearing; wondered at the poetic symmetry that she always appeared to him in the sky blue dress she'd worn that single time their kiss had chipped away his curse. He supposed he would always think of her that way: perfect and lovely and… unattainable.

"How could he?" Rumple asked quietly; moved to sit beside. "After everything I've done." He stared morosely at the sailor as her hand settled comfortably on his knee. Cut adrift and cast aside left no reason whatsoever to follow straight on after his fleeing son.

_Baelfire would be… be very proud of you._

The final words she'd told him in the flesh came back with just the opposite effect. In Storybrooke he'd dared to kindle the smallest flame of hope, but now that hope was lost. She always had been entirely too optimistic. Neal clearly wasn't proud of his attempt at sacrifice. His help was most definitely unwanted and untrusted, both, and the sorrow slashed his hurting heart that Neal had never been the one to search and see within.

Thumbs skimmed against the rough texture of bound straw: a lost boy in a lost land unable to toss aside the horrors of the past.

"Well. He may not know what was in your heart, but I do." He briefly glanced sideways while the vision mirrored spinning thoughts with invented candour. "You would have protected Henry. You would have even given your own life to show Neal that you've changed."

She'd always brought out the best in him yet Rumple paused to think as her declaration sunk in sluggishly. "Are you asking me? Or do you truly believe that?"

Her hand gently squeezed his knee as she leaned closer. "I know it with all my heart." Even the faded flat copy that was his imaginary Belle still carried the insight and confidence of the original and it pierced with aching sadness that she wasn't really there. "What I don't know is why you look so upset now. I mean Rumple, he's alive. Baelfire. You have something to live for."

He wouldn't meet her glowing eyes: that pinpoint strike of conscience embedded in vibrant blue. Belle wouldn't approve the flickering thoughts and buzz of evil deep at root. True, he'd had nothing left to live for when his boy was in the grave, but that no longer applied and selfishness once more swirled around his shattered heart.

_Well then I'll just have to kill him._

All his efforts at redemption lay scattered in rejected pieces across the ground. He'd always been easy prey to the darkness howling within and now it set his mind whirring off the edge with potential machinations.

Instead of his undoing, it wouldn't take anything at all to renew his plot to undo the boy instead. Another accident to Henry and he would live, the wicked voice inside him whispered with alluring intent. He'd nearly killed his grandson once, the boy blissfully oblivious to the sound of snapping rope and the lurking jaws of death: how narrowly close he'd come to a skull crushed against the rocks.

Rumple stood up quickly; strode past the campfire a few paces while his heart rate quickened in anticipation. The jungle was a dangerous place… and nobody need ever be the wiser. "But the prophecy remains. Henry is still my undoing."

"That's why you're so upset. You're so determined to die for the boy, but now, having something to live for has brought back that nasty habit of self-preservation hasn't it?" Disappointment may have packed her tone, but he knew she wasn't truly there to disagree. "Rumple. Habits can be broken. Can't they?"

Neal had assumed his father's happy ending centered on the beautiful Belle, but he was wrong. That illusion had long since spoilt when a tender kiss refused to work no matter how he wished it so. Redemption would not come through Belle. But Bae could still be his: a happy ending not withdrawn. It was only Henry standing in the way.

A hardness settled through his soul as the monster refused to turn and stare. Bae was blood; a bond of family would not be broken after all. And Belle was… not, though it killed his heart to think. There was no longer a tie powerful enough to hold the woman he knew with certainty would one day up and leave.

So an accident to fabricate or… perhaps he need do nothing at all, but stand back and let Pan destroy the lad instead. Let his son reap what he had sown by refusing his protection. His father would be there to pick up the mangled pieces at the end.

"Go away, Belle. I don't want to talk right now," the Dark One threatened, his boyhood toy clasped in steady hands: now closing on an emblem of a broken past and mistakes about to be remade.

He sensed he was alone for a fraction before the wind began to shift.

"Then go ahead. Kill him. Get rid of him. That's what you want to hear, isn't it?"

Rumple spun around, eyes widening in shock as an unseen fist gripped tight around his gut. "Lacey."

She strutted across the clearing in her tiny skin tight dress and heels, the black of both a mirror held against the malice entrenched within his soul. A vision just like Belle only with a saucy stare. That's all that she could be and Rumplestiltskin swallowed tensely as she eyed him up and down. Hips swayed provocatively and she walked straight into his space looking just the same as last he'd seen before the fairy potion had unlocked her true self and returned Belle once again.

"Well, well, well. This dark, sexy Lord of the Flies look you've got going is really… quite…" He grabbed her wandering hand before it could dip below his waist and she smirked a little as passion spiked, nudging ever closer while the separation of electric air decreased to less than inches. "How do you even really know the prophecy refers to Henry, hmm?"

"What?" He blinked and tried to wade out from underneath confusion, Lacey's sudden appearance having utterly kicked him off balance. Belle had come to help him wrestle with his demons and be the better man, but this… Well, Lacey hadn't ever wanted that.

"That's the funny thing about the future. It's never ever what you expect." She briefly paused to chew her bottom lip while pointedly watching his. "Look around, Gold. You're surrounded by little boys, at least one of whom would like to see you undone and is most certainly more than he appears. Damn aggravating little twerp, isn't he?"

His mouth flattened into a line. "Peter Pan didn't lead me to my son."

"Not yet. But the game is being reset. You're clever enough to figure that one out on your own. How long do you think Neal will last without your magic to protect them? Twenty minutes? Five?" Her palms drifted up his chest to link around his neck and his body ached for hers, but mostly for the love they'd shared though it was no longer what it was.

Rumplestiltskin flicked a hand with exaggerated flourish. "They've likely already been captured. I won't have to do a single thing," he murmured in a lilting callous tone and her head tilted in agreement.

"Hell, you don't even know if your 'undoing' is a good thing or a bad thing."

A palm hooked helplessly around her hip; yanked her close and he watched in fascination when her eyes darkened with desire. "For someone that's supposed to bring out the worst in me, you're doing a remarkably poor job of it."

"All I'm saying is that if you're going to kill someone before they kill you, shouldn't you make absolutely sure it's the right person?" The posed question made it sound as if he was particularly thick-headed and had overlooked the most important detail.

He opened his mouth then closed it. Stunned silence filled the void; left him uncertain how to respond. Of course the prophecy referred to Henry… How could it not?

"What are you doing here?"

"Oh you know why I'm here." Belle's sweet voice had dropped to a sultry, sexy tone and Lacey's sly smile sent nervous butterflies careening head to toe.

"For what? You and Belle compared notes in my head and she wasn't getting the job done? You never liked the good in me." A tinge of hurt escaped at that and Rumple backed a pace away, her hands slipping to his shoulders as he glanced involuntarily at his father's gift.

Lacey's eyes narrowed. "It is complicated. You did at least get that part right." The pause and stare seemed to strip him down as if all his deepest and most painful secrets had effortlessly been laid bare. The coiling snake of panic reared sending him scurrying for protection, but it was too late. She was already adding more. "You know in your heart that if you do this, Neal will never forgive you. And neither will Belle. Or… maybe that's what you want: to do something irreconcilably horrible and drive her far away."

Fingers bunched into a fist around the sailor's waist. "You don't know what you're talking about," he muttered quietly.

"It's for her own good, right? Force her to accept the truth that the good man will always be eclipsed by the darkness?" She closed the space he'd opened and he witnessed passion flare. "Thing is, Gold, I've already seen the monster and I haven't left. Besides, you know there is another way."

Lacey leaned toward him, slanting her mouth to match with his and the magnetic pull of longing had them edging slowly closer. Yet the aggressive expression on a face he held so dear was a stark reminder in the end that Lacey hadn't ever been remotely part of Belle.

Any curse can be broken, but only with true love. Walking through the forest before The Curse had first begun to break, not daring to hope that she loved him still, he'd hidden how inside he was a dreadful nervous wreck. Only now Rumplestiltskin knew the painful truth: she didn't feel the same and it had him jerking backward a heartbeat before those same lips could attempt another claim.

He'd lost his Belle and any hope the night he'd driven her from his castle. No woman could ever truthfully want a coward and… she'd been slowly slipping further every minute since, Lacey just one more manifestation of that fact carved down in stone.

"Don't."

He watched how the hurt was quickly smothered beneath an edge of false civility. "Redemption is a tricky thing." She grabbed his toy, fingers trailing lightly along the embroidered lapel of a navy uniform before pinning him with a fuming gaze. "Are you scared it will work or scared it won't?"

Scrambling to hide his vulnerability, he retreated behind the imp and trilled, "I don't know what you're talking about, dearie."

Fate wasn't on their side and in his deepest core he knew the truth. He didn't need his failings reinforced by a vision of his girlfriend's evil twin.

"I see you. I've always seen the love inside your heart," she uttered softly though he sensed the subtle hint of building anger hiding behind the words.

And therein lay the problem: her innate ability to see, rather than drawing them together, the sheer vulnerability triggered by a useless mask a terrifying prospect instead. Belle was flickering light within the darkness intent on exposing all his flaws and every flaw that was revealed merely seemed to pound the wedge in further. She wouldn't ever stay.

"You're not her; not real," Rumple tried to deflect. "You're just a vision. And even before, you never existed other than as a distorted copy created by a curse."

Her head whipped up. He'd struck a nerve. "Even a copy can rip your heart out. Do you think she's with Keith right now?" Lacey asked while circling around behind to tuck her front against his back then whisper in his ear, "Letting him paw and grope... Heaving her up against a wall."

"Shut up." He tore away from her touch, the nightmare image crossed with memory a heavy punch straight through his soul. "That was you, not her. Belle only wanted–"

"You? You don't even believe that," she scoffed. "Everybody has a dark side, Gold. Maybe you never looked hard enough for hers." Anger bubbled into hurt, striking deep and true between their hearts. "I offered you forever and all you could see was the woman I'm not. It didn't matter that Belle's love had always been bleeding through The Curse and that meant I would love you too. You couldn't ever see past the surface crap to the sliver of her in me."

Lacey stepped toward him, blue fire blasting from eyes that compelled him to believe. Still, all he could do was stand and stare as she barrelled furiously on.

"Strip away Belle's compassion and the refined elegance bred of nobility… leave intact her ability to see into the heart of a person… then twist and warp the pieces that remain: the devastated woman drinking alone in a pub after having her love for a beast tossed aside as if it wasn't something infinitely special, the same woman who wanted adventure, but more importantly someone to share it with, coupled with a passionate sexuality you'd only barely begun to… tap."

Lacey looped her fingers inside his belt and tugged him close, conviction burning bright though, stunned, he didn't really know what to think.

"I make perfect sense, Gold. I always did." She breathed the words against his mouth and it wasn't quite a kiss, her expression one of manufactured astonishment that hardened rapidly into steel. "But I'm not nice. And I'm a hell of a lot less forgiving."

Even if she loved him, it still didn't change the truth: a shadow of a love was left and she would ultimately walk away.

Rumple side-stepped the anger; softly touched a finger to her lips. "We said our goodbye. And she's safe. She'll move on."

That only seemed to infuriate her more. "Oh please. Storybrooke may have nicer furnishings, but you left her trapped in a dungeon just as surely as Regina did. Another day alone, another mark on the wall." Lacey raised an irate finger; a downward gesture knocked one off.

"And all because you still don't think she truly loves you. You're just the lonely, lost little boy whose only friends when he was small were this doll his lout of a father gave him," she hurtled the little straw toy back at his chest; he fumbled and missed and it fell forgotten to the ground, "a deceitful bastard named Peter who visited in his dreams, oh… and his sheepdog. Unwanted and unloved: that's all you've ever been. Surely the beautiful princess will eventually come to her senses and dump your sorry pathetic ass."

Livid confrontation exploded behind his eyes leaving him frozen just as entirely as the squid ink earlier. It tapped every hidden anxiety buried deep within his heart and ripped the mask aside with the wrenching accuracy of an archer's barrage gouging deep.

"You're still a coward, Rumplestiltskin, no different than that night at your spinning wheel."

"That's-" He couldn't even say it; wouldn't meet the only set of eyes that had ever sliced clean through centuries of protective façade.

"A lie?" A raised eyebrow dared him to even attempt such a falsehood and Lacey's voice shook with hurt and rage. "She's in Storybrooke waiting for you, cradling that damn cup, because there is no option for going back or moving on. She'll wait forever because nothing can keep us apart. She made that choice on a roadway a long time ago when she decided to return to you instead of her father and has kept making the same choice ever since. Belle chose _you_."

"Well she shouldn't have!" he shouted then spun away.

And there it was.

_No one, no one can ever love me!_

"You are still too petrified to believe the truth: that Belle is the only person in all the worlds that sees you for who you are and loves you for it, regardless."

"Go away, Lacey." His body trembled at the harsh assessment; cringed at the truth. Yet he knew with panicking certainty he'd already lost the deepest shade of her love, reality reinforcing a bitter truth that gnawed and tore at any flirting attempt at happiness. Their kiss hadn't worked, hadn't broken his curse ever again let alone hers, and a piece of him shriveled and died every time it didn't.

As if she'd read his mind; the tense set of his shoulders, "That's the thing about magic. You have to believe." A gentle hand on his forearm tugged him back and he turned to see his sweet Belle in front of him once more. "Until you see something worthwhile in yourself, something true," she pressed a palm against his heart, "and believe that I see it too, True Love's kiss won't ever work."

She stepped forward, her hand drifting upward to tenderly cup his cheek. "Belle…"

"I told you once when you find something that's worth fighting for, you never give up." She inched nearer. "And you are worth waiting forever for. I have utmost faith in that."

A lifetime of paralyzing fear and doubt curled deep within his soul. There seemed no way to dislodge it. It left him afraid to hope, afraid to be brave, afraid to let go and… trust. The word floated through his mind like a child's puff of breath scattering thousands of gossamer seeds to the wind and it was a prospect even harder to catch than love. She _would_ leave him one day. Everybody did. And it would destroy him.

"Shh. There's always hope." The haunting sorrow in her expression pierced, verging on the rip of a magical dagger through his heart. "I may not be your happy ending, but you are mine, Rumplestiltskin."

Fingers threaded into the soft hair at the nape of his neck, silently urging his mouth to hers as she rose up on tiptoes. Her kiss was a gentle exploration that marked his soul; sent her love cresting over him in soothing waves and he so wanted to believe in even the smallest chance that she was right. They stilled into the touch, breath mingling and foreheads tilted together. With eyes closed, his hands feathered across shoulder and hip, drawing her closer into a created circle of yearning.

If only this was real. If only… she would truly be his happy ending.

Rumple held his breath while time hesitated in the darkness; silently waited for his chance at redemption, for the cleansing burst of magic.

Belle. _His_ Belle. Forever.

He loved her yet… it never came and the meaning behind was crystal: their love… it wasn't true.

A quiet gasp of heartbreak came as they inched themselves apart yet the subtle shift of wind seemed to carry deep belief.

And his shadow watched from distance within the endless night.

* * *

*finis*


End file.
